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Tamerath

Hall of Maiden's Trap Encounter

The Maids’ of Strahd XP 2,400Stained lace hangs neatly from eight canopied beds. In each bed, a figure of a young woman lays motionless, pale hands folded over her chest. In the eighth bed lay Ireena Kolyana dressed not in the armor you last saw her in, but a white wedding dress.Perceptioncharacters can’t use Perception to detect this trapAdditional Skill: ArcanaDC 30 : the character notices that Ireena is just an illusion, but the rest of the women are realTriggerThe trap attacks when either someone touches the body of a maiden or Ireena’s image. AttackOpportunity Action MeleeTarget: Each creature in the room.Attack: +21 vs. ACHit: 4d6+15 necrotic damage, and the target is weakened and immobilized (save ends both).Countermeasures:*A character who approaches the maidens within 2 squares can disable the trap by succeeding on a DC 20 Religion check as a standard action *A character adjacent to the body of a maiden can reduce the bones to inert shards (AC 5; Fortitude 10; Reflex 5; hp 40)

This is the trap I created, I used a trap from the Open Grave book as my base and modified it a bit to suit the Castle. Also I wanted it to have a bit more substance than just a trap, by making it an encounter where the PC's are haunted

My changes:

I set up 7 minion monsters that were actual ghosts of the maidens and immune to the necrotic effects of the trap. They had attacks that dealt psychic damage to the party while their corpse was still "active" (read: hasn't been crushed to dust or laid to rest).

The ghosts attacks did minor damage compared to the room, but when they did inflict damage they told a bit of their story and their last moments of happiness in town before they were abducted and taken to the castle

DM Notes: I used the elite version of the trap in open grave, the skeletons having 80 hp really slowed things down..and the pcs were battered each round with the necrotic energies...almost resulting in a party wipe. If I were to do it again I'd use the same damage for the trap, only 40 hp for the bones, and either 1) go back to the original design and ONLY divine class heroes can use the religion check to disable that corpse or 2) raise the DC to 30 so that it'd be harder to shut a corpse down for people that are not trained in the skill.

This was my first attempt at actually designing a trap as I've felt up till now the traps in my campaign came straight from some 4E source...so all in all...not bad. I really liked this encounter and the PC's seemed to really get into the stories of how the women died...which was awesome for me because I nailed that part of the trap.

One of the biggest draws to this module when it came out was the fact that chances were slim the party would survive. I love the trap as you designed it, life in this realm is beyond hard and they did survive, this alone speaks well of the party. Keep the press on Tamerath.